


Different Next Season

by DesertVixen



Category: A League of Their Own (1992)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 05:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21230306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/pseuds/DesertVixen
Summary: AU where Dottie comes back...





	Different Next Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegantstupidity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/gifts).

The Racine players’ idea – staying in their town and working until the next season started – had caught on with the other teams. Ira Lowenstein had helped the teams work out a deal with the league where they could remain in the team houses and pay rent, as long as they remained respectable.

Most of the Peaches chose to do the same. Rockford was proud of their girls, who had almost won the series. 

Perhaps if Marla Hooch hadn’t run off to get married, things would have been different. 

Perhaps if Kit Keller, the “Oregon Rifle”, hadn’t been traded to Racine, where she hit the winning run, things would have been different. 

Perhaps if Dottie Hinson had been able to play, but after receiving the telegram that her husband died…well, no one could blame her.

There was always next season, Rockford people told themselves, and settled down to the routine of fall. 

The Peaches were there to stay. 

*** 

Jimmy Dugan was there to stay as well. He hadn’t planned on staying, had planned to make his way back to a big city and a regular life, but somehow he just never got around to it. After all, he decided, he’d been hired to coach these ballplayers, and they might as well take advantage of the off-season. 

Betty Horn and Evelyn Gardner added respectability as married women, staying in the house. Betty’s husband was still overseas, and Evelyn’s husband was nowhere to be found. Marla and Nelson had returned, but lived in their own little house. 

Miss Cuthbert had decided not to stay on, but had promised to return before the start of the next season. She had explained that she needed a vacation, and intended to travel to somewhere peaceful and quiet.

It didn’t take long for Jimmy to realize why the chaperone needed a vacation. Between Mae and Doris finding every roadhouse and bar in the area, and helping the others sneak out, the lineup of young men on Friday and Saturday nights waiting to escort the girls places, and just keeping up with the Peaches, Jimmy was exhausted. 

That, and the fact that he missed one Peach in particular. Dottie Hinson hadn’t just been the big sister who kept the team in one place, she had been the first woman he actually noticed, actually valued, in a long time. He’d come to be fond of all his ballplayers, but he wasn’t hypocritical enough to tell himself he was fond of Dottie. They’d grown close on all those late-night bus rides, but he had never forgotten that she was a married woman. 

Now she was a widow. He’d forced himself not to think about that too much, and to just hope that Dottie came back.

The team needed her. 

If he was honest, he needed her. He needed her like he needed baseball.

So, it was with great relief that he saw the woman walking up with two suitcases, the smile on her face when she saw him.

“I’m back,” she announced, giving him the smile he had missed since the day she left. There was no question that he would take her back – that they would take her back – although he was sorely tempted to tease her, just a little.

But the sound of her voice had carried inside the house, and they were surrounded by the rest of the Peaches, several of them yelling that they were so glad to have her back.

She wasn’t just back, Jimmy thought, she was where she belonged.

She was back to play the game.

She was home.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! Your letter said it was okay to ignore the character death DNW in this fandom, and it was a better way to make this story work.


End file.
